Consumers are spoilt with choices when it comes to new shoe releases. It’s no longer enough to look great but also what it’s made and how it’s made. So Adidas developed a shoe tested and designed with ISS (International Space Station) National Lab to push the limits of its product.

With this launch, Adidas wanted to leverage this innovative creation to increase its AdiClub members whilst driving desire for the shoe and brand.

Since runners are always looking for the next big challenge, we create a mission for runners they can’t resist. We challenged runners to Run To The Moon, covering a distance of 384,000KM through 5 different levels of space: Stratosphere, Troposphere, Mesosphere, Thermosphere and Exosphere.

With a collective goal to cover the full distance between Earth and Moon to unlock the shoe-drop.

UltraBoost20 is a product that celebrates human’s imagination and ambition to break boundaries which is consistent with what drives runners – constantly pushing their running limits. Research has shown that 59.4% want to run better and 44.5% want to run longer distances. (Source: iranshao running report 2020)

Combining this motivation of our target audience and the space-collaboration of the UltraBoost20, we were inspired to challenge our audience to run beyond Earth.

In partnership with popular running app in China, JoyRun, we created a custom challenge for runners to collectively accomplish in order to unlock the shoe-drop. Together, runners have to cover the distance between Earth and the Moon – 384,000KM. Runners simply sign up for the challenge via the JoyRun app and start running for the GPS tracker to clock the distance ran.

To make it exciting and encouraging, the full distance of the mission is divided into 5 levels of the space atmosphere - Stratosphere, Troposphere, Mesosphere, Thermosphere and Exosphere. Runners are rewarded at each level with rewards as badges, t-shirt, coupons and pants but the ultimate collective reward is the shoe-drop.

The campaign was amplified through Wechat, Weibo and Douyin to garner more traffic through working with influencers.

The mission was accomplished in just 4 days, much faster than what was anticipated.

A total of 180,068 runners took part in the challenge, attracting an increase of 19,900 new members for AdiClub.

Beyond running, this unique launch garnered 1.225 billion worth of PR and brand impression.